New search engine -- Northern Light (fwd)

[Roy Tennant]

I recently received an announcement of a new search engine. I was all
primed to go see some lame attempt and therefore was somewhat surprised by
what I found. I haven't yet had time to do a more thorough evaluation, but
at first glance this is definitely worth checking out. 
Roy


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 10:08:55 -0400
From: Joyce Ward <jward at northernlight.com>
Subject: Re: New search engine -- Northern Light

>I would like to introduce a new Internet search service --
>
>Northern Light, available at www.nlsearch.com.  
>
>The engine delivers on the promise of organized and comprehensive search
>results by doing two things no other engine in existence does:
>
>1. We are crawling the Web and indexing every word of every page out
>there, but we also license documents -- entire magazines, reference
>works, newswires -- that are not on the Web, and offer them in real time
>as an integral part of the user's search results.  We call this licensed
>information the 'Special Collection'. 
>
>2. We classify everything in our database, unlike Alta Vista (which
classifies 
>nothing) and Yahoo (which hand-classifies a tiny proportion of all web
pages).  
>A user's search results are sorted by subject, type, or source, and arranged 
>in folders to the left of the screen.  The folders help the user navigate to 
>highly relevant content -- instead of scrolling through thousands of 
>undifferentiated results.  We call this innovation our 'Custom Search
Folders'. 
>
>Part of the technology behind our Custom Search Folders is a proprietary
>classification scheme developed by the librarians and editors here at
>Northern Light. The 'literary warrant' of our scheme is a hybrid of Web
>and licensed documents.  The model used in developing our retrieval and
>display capabilities was that of a librarian fielding a reference
>question and organizing results for the user.
>
>Our business model is to make money through the individual online sale of
>items from the Special Collection.  Web data is always and forever free;
>we'll start charging for Special Collection items after September.  The 
>average cost of a document is $1.00. There will be membership and volume
discount
>deals available.
>
>I hope that you'll take a look at the engine.   Your writings, and
>professional librarians, have influenced our product -- we hope it shows!
>
>Your truly,
>
> Joyce Ward
> 
> 
>Director, Content Classification and Directory
>
>jward at northernlight.com
>Northern Light Technology LLC
>222 Third Street  Suite 1320
>Cambridge, MA 02142
>617-577-2778 (office)
>617-621-3459 (FAX)
>Northern Light's URL:<bold> nlsearch.com
>
>
>